Written by Meera Marthi
16 years to this day! As our daughter rightly puts it, it was the second birth for all of us as a family! 16 years, our younger one came home. He has enveloped us with kindness, compassion, and, more importantly, unconditional love. We cannot imagine our lives without him. He considers himself lucky, but we think we are lucky ones.
A has flown out of the home; he chose to do his 11th and 12th at a boarding school. We were heartbroken that he was going away 3 years earlier than we thought, but that is life. He has become more confident, mature, kind, and considerate—a typical teenager, though, with his ideas, theories, and tastes.
I cannot talk enough about him. There is a different energy when he is home; there is never a dull moment. The memory of his coming home to us is as fresh as it was 16 years back. Still remember his curious little looks, his eyes following his sister everywhere she went and wondering where he was. I have been asked many a time, why adoption? And I respond with, “Why not?”. Adoption is just a parenting choice. We chose adoption because we wanted to. Simple.
We see Akash thrive, we see him growing in more ways than one, we have seen him struggle, we have seen him ecstatic, and we have seen him sad; through it all, one thing that he is sure of is that he has a family that will stand by him and support him through thick and thin.
As an organisation, we have been asked about the impact of our work. How does one measure the impact of a family on a child, how does one measure how much a child is loved by their family, how does one measure the security a child gets in a family, and how does one measure the sense of belonging?
Every child deserves and needs a family. Period. We are glad A chose us to be his family!
